Laguna by Poolside vs Newport AI: Features, Pricing & Which Is Better (2026)
A side-by-side comparison of Laguna by Poolside and Newport AI — features, pricing, and ideal use cases — to help you decide which AI tool fits your workflow.
Laguna by Poolside
Poolside
Poolside's family of open Mixture-of-Experts foundation models for agentic coding — XS.2 runs locally, M.1 reaches 72.5% on SWE-bench Verified.
Key features
- Two Model Sizes: Laguna XS.2 (33B total / 3B active) and Laguna M.1 (225B total / 23B active) target different latency and capability needs.
- Mixture-of-Experts Architecture: Routes each token through a subset of experts for efficiency at large scale.
- Local Deployment: XS.2 is small enough to run on a Mac with 36 GB of RAM via Ollama under an Apache 2.0 license.
- Strong SWE-bench Results: XS.2 hits 68.2% and M.1 reaches 72.5% on SWE-bench Verified.
- Bundled Coding Agent: Ships 'pool,' a lightweight terminal-based coding agent.
- Agent Client Protocol: Includes a dual ACP client-server used internally for agent RL training and evaluation.
Best for
- Local Agentic Coding: Running XS.2 on a laptop for private, offline code generation and editing.
- High-Capability Code Tasks: Using M.1 for harder, long-horizon software engineering work.
- Self-Hosted Deployments: Building on open weights to avoid third-party API dependencies.
- Research & Fine-Tuning: Adapting permissively licensed weights for custom coding workflows.
- Benchmarking: Evaluating agentic coding performance against SWE-bench Verified and Pro.
Newport AI
NewportAI
Platform and API for creating digital avatars, voice synthesis, and image generation for media and product integration.
Key features
- Digital Avatar Creation: Tools and product workflows to create customizable digital avatars for use in video, streaming, virtual environments, and marketing assets, accessible via web products and API endpoints.
- Voice Generation and Synthesis: Services to produce synthetic speech and voice assets for characters, narration, or dubbing that can be delivered through API integration or product interfaces.
- Image Generation: Image creation capabilities for producing photorealistic or stylized visuals to support concept art, marketing imagery, or in-product visuals via product UI or API calls.
- API Services: Programmable endpoints to embed avatar, voice, and image generation into custom applications, pipelines, or media production workflows for automation and scale.
- Product Suite Integration: A combined offering of ready-to-use products and developer-facing services so teams can use GUI tools or integrate features directly into their technology stack.
- Enterprise and Customization Support: Product and service orientation aimed at enabling customized outputs and integrations for studios, developers, and production teams needing tailored asset pipelines.
- Digital avatar creation and customization
- Synthetic voice generation and voice cloning
- Image generation and image synthesis
- Products for end users
- Developer-facing API services for integration
Best for
- Virtual Talent and Influencers: Create and deploy digital avatars with synthetic voices for social channels, livestreaming, and virtual influencer campaigns.
- Voiceovers and Dubbing: Generate voice tracks for promotional videos, e-learning content, or localized dubbing integrated via API into media production workflows.
- Game and Virtual World Characters: Produce character avatars and voice assets for games and virtual environments to accelerate asset creation and iteration.
- Marketing and Creative Content: Rapidly generate imagery and avatar-led creative assets for ad campaigns, landing pages, and social media posts.
- Prototype and Previsualization: Use generated images and avatars to prototype scenes, storyboards, or product concepts before full production.
- Customer-Facing Digital Assistants: Build synthetic digital humans and voice experiences for customer service, kiosks, or guided product demos.
- Creating virtual characters and digital avatars for games and virtual worlds
- Generating voiceovers and synthetic voices for media and accessibility
- Producing AI-generated images for marketing and content creation
- Embedding avatar and voice capabilities into apps via APIs
- Rapid prototyping of multimodal experiences (voice+visual) for products